Abbaye Saint-Magloire de Lehon, France
The twenty-fourth of October is the feast of another Welsh holy man and saint in Brittany, the cousin and disciple of Saint Samson, Saint Maelor. He is renowned as the second bishop of Dol-de-Bretagne. He also has connexions with the Saxon Saint Helier of Jersey, having been a visitor at Jersey, and is also considered the first of the bearers of the Gospel to the isle of Sark in the Channel.
Saint Maelor [also Maglorius or Magloire] was quite close kin to Saint Samson: a double cousin, in fact. Maelor’s mother Afrel was the sister of Samson’s mother Anna of Gwent; and his father Umbrafel was the brother of Samson’s father Amon of Dyfed. Maelor was the eldest child: he had a younger brother Henwg (also commemorated as a local saint) and a youngest sibling, of which we know neither the name nor the gender. He was sent to school together with his kinsman Samson – the College of Theodosius, in fact. The two of them studied together under Saint Illtud, who gifted them not only with the sæcular knowledge of the liberal arts but also with the true knowledge: which is the love of Christ and the love of neighbour. When Samson departed Cor Tewdws for Cornwall and, later, Brittany – so too did Maelor.
Maelor assisted his illustrious and holy kinsman in all tasks, a dutiful, meek and ungrudging disciple who did what he was bidden without complaint. He worked wonders in both Cornwall and Brittany, and he accompanied Saint Samson to Dol. Once in Brittany, Maelor lived for five decades as an abbot at Lanmeur, some 150 kilometres west of Dol, on the other side of Saint-Brieuc. When Samson reposed in the Lord in 565, Maelor was named by his cousin and subsequently confirmed by common consent as the Bishop of Dol. However, he did not persist long in this office. Having been visited by an angel, he resigned his bishopric to Saint Beuzeg and embarked on a journey into the Channel Islands.
In his travels to Guernsey, it is reported that Saint Maelor healed the dumb and deaf daughter of Nivo, the chieftain there, and restored her speech and hearing. The chieftain gave the saint rule over a third of the island as reward. Saint Maelor also visited Saint Markulf’s monastery in Jersey, where he is popularly reputed to have encountered and slain a dragon. This may have indicated that he encountered some remnants of pagan worship on the island and destroyed one of the altars, as is the case with other similar hagiographical dragon-slayings.
In Brittany he also cured a local chieftain named Loyesco of a skin disease which may have been leprosy, which had afflicted him for seven years. In recompense, the chieftain gave Maelor first half, and then the whole, of the island of Sark in the English Channel, which had been part of his demesne. Maelor took sixty-two disciples with him and departed for Sark, establishing a monastery there on the island. He performed a number of wonders among the Celtic residents of Sark, including healings and saving folk from drowning. His stewardship of Sark was such that it was quickly reckoned something of a paradise. Crops sprang up and flourished with little effort, and fishermen hauled ashore nets teeming with their catches. Saint Maelor seems to have had that closeness to nature which was typical of the Brythonic hermits and holy men, including his master Illtud.
He was already a septuagenarian when he left Dol to Saint Beuzeg, and nearing eighty in the last months of his life. In the church he had built on Sark he was visited by an angel, who administered to him the Gifts. For six months afterwards until his repose in the Lord, Saint Maelor could not be drawn out of the Church except for very urgent business. Instead, he would recite the words of Psalm 26: ‘One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life.’ He reposed in the Lord on the twenty-fourth of October, 575, in the midst of his monastic brethren on Sark.
His tomb was the site of many wonders of the same sort he had wrought in life, healing the blind and deaf, curing skin diseases, calming storms and preventing folk from a drowning death. His relics were removed from Sark by stealth, by monks from the abbey of Léhon in the Côtes d’Armor, some miles south of Saint-Malo. In the 900s they were translated from Léhon to Paris, to save them from the onslaught of Norman invaders. Saint Maelor’s cultus is still active in the Channel Islands and in Brittany, particularly in Léhon. Holy father Maelor, meek disciple of your kinsman Samson and gentle father of monks, pray unto Christ our God for us sinners!
At the bidding of our Father Samson thou didst leave thy native Wales
To serve God in Lammeur’s monastery, O Father Maelor.
Having pleased God with the sweet fragrance of monastic struggle,
Thou didst grace the island of Sark with thy godly repose.
Pray to God for us, O blessed one, that He will spare us
From sudden and unprepared death and grant salvation to our souls.
St Peter’s Church, Sark
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